All included digital clock widgets take up double the vertical space they actually need, which keeps me from having the “Power Toggles” line (1/5 of the available height), the clock (1/5), and my Calendar appointments (3/5) on my home screen, like I used to have with the Fairphone 1.
I tried installing DashClock Widget from F-Droid, only to find that it suffers from the same blank useless wasted space…
Maybe the problem comes from the Android-provided widget-set from Fairphone 2 Open OS.
Anyway, solving this would be nice
Well that is simply due to the fact that the Fairphone launcher (all OS versions) use a 4x5 grid. If you want a different grid you’ll have to switch to a different launcher.
E.g. with buzz launcher you can choose up to 12x12 grid.
Thanks @paulakreuzer for answering But that’s not what I meant.
With the Fairphone 1, I could put the Clock widget on 1 line of the grid. With the Fairphone 2 (at least with the Open OS), I cannot resize the Clock below 2 lines, one of which is empty.
Maybe you had the depreciated 1.8(.0) on the FP1? It has a different launcher. For me the clock takes up two rows on the FP1 too. Then again I’m using a beta version on FP1 and I’m not 100% certain it was the same with standard 1.8.7…
Anyways the FP2 launcher is designed like that so if you want it different you’ll need a different launcher or make a #featurerequests::tag (no guarantee).
I just checked: the FP1 has build number W20-HL.V0035 / Fairphone Kola Nut 1.8.7. And I can put the Date&Time widget on a single row. And I never changed the launcher. Sure, the date is then hidden and I only see the time. But that’s enough because the date is already shown on the Calendar widget.
Anyway… So the behaviour I see is normal… Well, I’ll search how to change the launcher then, and see if that helps. Thanks.
All You need to do is to Download it from Play Store y or F-Droid (more to choose from in Play Store) and then set it as your default launcher by pressing ‘Always’ when then hitting the Home-Button. There’s not much risk to it as You can easily uninstall a launcher just like any other app
Ah ah! So it is indeed bigger than it should be
Is there any plan to fix this?
As for having an alternative launcher, does it consume more RAM and/or battery to add a launcher app? Will the latter intelligently replace the initial launcher while it is installed, or will it display itself “above” the standard one?
It depends on the launcher you choose how much RAM and battery will be used. Fairphone OS also uses a launcher (“Fairphone Launcher 3” on FP2) which will be deactivated once you choose to set another launcher as default. However, you can always switch among all installed launchers (that includes the initial one, Fairphone Launcher 3) through the system settings without any troubles (Preferences → Home Screen; There you’ll see a list of all installed launchers).
The majority of launchers feel and look just like the preinstalled one, but also offer additional features, especially regarding theming. The launcher I prefer provides quite a different user interface and is very slim and minimal and does not use much RAM.
I’ve searched F-Droid, and the only launchers I saw that seem able to display widgets are Launcher3 and Catapult. Do you know other open-source launchers that are able to display widgets (and launch apps of course)?
Sure. I’m using Smart Launcher 3 and bought the Pro Version (which only provides some nice little toppings to the functionality) several years ago. It also supports widgets. However, it is not open source and thus not available on F-Droid.
Yesterday, I tried to install Launcher3 from F-Droid, but installation failed for an unknown reason. I suppose there were conflicts with the already installed “Fairphone Launcher 3”, which is probably based on the former.
So I installed Catapult (from F-Droid too). While it is a nice configurable launcher, it suffers from an irremovable favourites+menu bar at the bottom. Because of this, I felt uncomfortable setting the grid to more than 6 lines. With this setup, the Clock widget was still unusable for my purpose.
Since I’m not going to put a proprietary-software launcher on my OpenSource Fairphone2, and the too-large-Clock bug is FP-OpenSourceOS-specific, there is no solution, apart from fixing this bug in the Open-Source Fairphone OS…
Unless there is another open-source launcher I could try…?
@huskers: I updated the repositories beforehand. Besides, the download went along without errors; only the installation itself failed. For that matter, the F-Droid Privileged Extension refuses to install too, but that’s not a problem…
